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> The concept of “the sphere of possible existences” is not the same as the world (which is an a priori regulative idea) but denotes the infinite possibility de
by boris_m 5y ago
> The concept of “the sphere of possible existences” is not the same as the world (which is an a priori regulative idea) but denotes the infinite possibility determined only by the lack of contradiction.
If we look at the example, the lack of contradiction is one condition, but there is another one - totality.
The sentence "the whole sphere of possible existences, the mortal occupies one part, and the immortal the other." contains the assumption that all objects in the universe are either mortal or immortal, which is questionable e.g. what about the things that are not alive in the first place? e.g. is a chair mortal or immortal?
This issue is not present in the dichotomy between reality and negation e.g. the dichotomy between "mortal" and "not mortal" - here it is easy to sort all possible objects to mortal, e.g. a chair is clearly not mortal. In my view this is the difference between reality and negation.
Happy to read your thoughts on the subject.
- nathias 5y agoI was getting at that it denotes the sphere of posssibility not the world, the wolrd is different idea for Kant and is at the centre of his project. His philosophy project is trying to continue the projects of his time (Baumgarten and Wolff) and in Wolff he sees the ultimate failiure of philosophy as he can't ground the concept of the world (no totality of space/time just singular things, which for Kant means a problem with scientific principles). Another point, based on my own work not general scholarship, is that the negation/affirmation/limitation is paradigmatic here, and we see very explicitly the conditions of transcendental philosophy as the necessity of separating limitation and negation that in non-critical philosophies coincide and concerns infinite judgments (judgments where the predicate includes negation). The procedure of transcendental philosophy is like logic but without abstracting from content, by analysis of necessary conditions and limitation of speculation that precludes judgments from deducing A from non-A because of transcendental aesthetics. So to come back to the categories, there is the infinite space of possible predicates of soul (each subject of judgment gets its own infinity, this is analysis of term logic) and we have the predicate 'mortal' excluded from it, this negation does not negate the infinity of possible predicates of the soul, so our knowledge of the soul remains the same (no apophatic theology). This has to do with the knowledge of things in themselves, not the universe/the world.
- boris_m 5y agoSorry, I coudn't parse most of that, perhaps you can include an example?